The Guardian Climate Change

‘Now we have to make sure there’s not a second, financial tragedy that follows the physical catastrophe,’ says consumer advocate

• California wildfires – live

California homeowners who lost everything in this week’s devastating Los Angeles-area fires now have to battle their insurance companies to recover the value of their homeowners’ policies – if they are lucky enough to have insurance at all.

With estimates of the economic damage from the fires now reaching $52bn-$57bn, consumer advocates and veterans of past disasters say homeowners can expect weeks or months of paperwork to prove that they have lost what they say they have lost, if not also pressure from claims adjusters and a whole class of disaster professionals to make a quick settlement for less than they are entitled to under their policies.

Trump and Maga allies are using the fires to attack leaders like Newsom – possibly foretelling power struggles ahead

If ever a situation cried out for elevating national unity over political divisions, the dystopian scenes emanating from the Los Angeles fires surely qualified.

The catastrophe that has left at least 10 people dead as of Friday morning, more than 1,000 structures destroyed and forced thousands fleeing their homes would – in an ideal and less polarised America – spur humane empathy and solidarity in place of tribal partisanship.

Death toll rises to 10 as first identified victims were Altadena residents affected by ongoing Eaton fire

• California wildfires – live updates
• Californians: have you been affected by the wildfires?

At least 10 people have been killed in the wildfires still surging across the Los Angeles area.

Victor Shaw, 66, was the first of the fatalities to be named, after he died in the Eaton fire raging to the north-east of LA while attempting to extinguish flames at his home of 55 years in Altadena.

To solve the climate crisis, power must flow away from the billionaire class

When I feel uncertain, I find it’s helpful to write down things I know to be true. Fossil fuels are causing irreversible planetary overheating. Overheating threatens essentially all life on Earth. Oil and gas executives knew this but they chose to systematically lie and block a climate transition. They continue to make this choice.

I choose to focus my energy on the climate crisis because a habitable planet is a prerequisite for everything worth fighting for, and because the prospect of losing a planet feels horrific and sad to me in a primal way that I can’t express with words. I’m also simply in love with the Earth. But planetary overheating is really just the most geophysical symptom of extractive colonial capitalism – “billionairism” – a system designed to pump wealth from the poor to the rich, creating billionaires, the healthcare crisis, the housing crisis, genocide, hierarchies like racism and patriarchy, and a great deal of suffering.

Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist and author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution

A similar campaign of rumors and lies was seen after the North Carolina hurricane, with DEI a primary target

As Los Angeles firefighters battle ongoing blazes, prominent rightwing figures are spreading bigoted criticism of the response and lies about who is to blame, including that the fire is raging because of diversity within the fire department.

The misinformation echoes the claims that plagued the North Carolina hurricane response. Both disasters led to outrage, which partisan actors seized upon to advance their political goals, muddying the already confusing information ecosystem that accompanies a fast-moving news event.

Charity reveals plans to create 250,000 hectares of nature-rich landscape as it marks 130th anniversary

In past decades the focus has been on protecting beautiful landscapes such as the Lake District, trying to save the crumbling coast or breathing life into historic country houses.

Now the National Trust is marking its 130th anniversary by unveiling “moonshot” plans to address what it regards as the current national need – the climate and nature crises.

Highest recorded temperatures supercharged extreme weather – with worse to come, EU data shows

Climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time last year, supercharging extreme weather and causing “misery to millions of people”.

The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.

It’s possible for massive fires to burn in Australian cities. Planning needs to reflect this

As the Los Angeles wildfires rage, we are watching a disaster unfold in real time.

We knew this would happen eventually. We have moved from possible futures to these things now happening. The deferment has ended.

Emissions caused by wealthiest 1% so far this year would take someone from poorest 50% three years to create

The world’s richest 1% have already used up their fair share of the global carbon budget for 2025, just 10 days into the year.

In less than a week and a half, the consumption habits of an individual from this monied elite had already caused, on average, 2.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, according to analysis by Oxfam GB. It would take someone from the poorest 50% of humanity three years to create the same amount of pollution.

With winds scattering embers across swaths of land, the Eaton fire burns down some houses while leaving others unscathed

• Tell us: how have the California wildfires affected you?

Ash was falling gently over the Historic Highlands neighborhood of Pasadena, California, on Thursday as residents began to grapple with the toll of the Eaton fire still being fought in the mountains above.

This area was under an evacuation order on Wednesday, and the next day the streets were still littered with fallen branches from Tuesday night’s intense windstorm. The fire broke out early in the evening and spread rapidly amid the powerful gusts, killing at least four people and destroying more than 5,000 structures in the area, which also includes the Altadena and Sierra Madre neighborhoods. As of Thursday afternoon, the blaze had burned 13,690 acres and remained 0% contained.

More than 170,000 people have been evacuated as firefighters battle flames across five areas of the Californian city. The largest fire, in Pacific Palisades, west of Santa Monica, left a trail of devastation, with hundreds of homes and buildings destroyed. In a preliminary death toll, officials said five people had died as a result of the fires

• California fires: live updates

• Visual explainer: why are the LA wildfires so bad?

• The Los Angeles wildfires are climate disasters compounded

The current fires in Los Angeles are reminders of the costs of forgetting

The fires raging in and around Malibu are huge, and they’re terrible, and they’re also the latest in a series of catastrophic fires in Los Angeles county and the region, the latest consequence of heat and drought and wind that have long created the region’s volatile fire weather.

The climate crisis has made it hotter and drier and made wildfire worse here and across the west and around the world, but this region’s ecology has always been wedded to fire. Homes built in and around natural landscapes – canyons, chaparral coastal hills, forests, mountainsides – with a history of wildfire that are pretty much guaranteed to burn again sooner or later create the personal tragedies and losses and the pressure for fire crews to try to contain the blazes. But suppressing the blazes lets the fuel load build up, meaning that fire will be worse when it comes.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

With 2024 set to go down as the hottest year on record, we know that what is coming is truly horrifying

The past 12 months have seen our world enter new territory. Last year will go down as the first time that the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above preindustrial times over a calendar year. We could crash permanently through the 1.5C guardrail within the next five years, and shatter the 2C limit as soon as 2034. This will almost certainly result in the tipping points for collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets being crossed, committing us to the drowning of coastal towns and cities.

In years to come, we will look back at this time and ask the same question that future generations will ask: why didn’t we stop this catastrophe?

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide

Roger Hallam is co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil

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Conditions for a January LA firestorm have not existed before now, writes a meteorologist and climate journalist

An exceptional mix of environmental conditions has created an ongoing firestorm without known historical precedent across southern California this week.

The ingredients for these infernos in the Los Angeles area, near-hurricane strength winds and drought, foretell an emerging era of compound events – simultaneous types of historic weather conditions, happening at unusual times of the year, resulting in situations that overwhelm our ability to respond.

The firefighters earn $5.80-$10.24 per day plus $1 an hour when responding to active emergencies, according to CDCR

Hundreds of incarcerated firefighters are helping battle the destructive blazes that are rapidly spreading across southern California as a powerful windstorm devastates the region.

The California department of corrections and rehabilitation (CDCR) said on Wednesday that it had deployed 395 imprisoned firefighters across 29 crews while the county fights multiple out-of-control blazes fueled by extreme winds and dry conditions. The incarcerated crews are embedded with the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire) and its nearly 2,000 firefighters, who have been stretched thin from several simultaneous emergencies.

Firefighters said the destruction from the California fires was unlike any they had seen in their decades-long careers

• California wildfires – live

The sun glared red as it sank into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, casting an orange hue over the carnage smoldering on the southern Californian coast. It will be a day not soon forgotten in Los Angeles, which by evening was flanked by catastrophic wildfires in nearly all directions.

It’s too early to determine the full extent of the destruction caused by the blazes, but in the neighborhoods bordering the Palisades fire it was clear the impact was enormous.

Huge wildfires roaring through the Los Angeles area of Pacific Palisades has left the neighborhood in ruins. Resident Sanah Chung left his Pacific Palisades home when a mandatory evacuation order was placed but returned to protect his home from the fire. 'I know this looks pretty stupid, but If I can save one ember from burning down my house, I'll take the risk,' said Chung.

• Visual explainer: why are the LA wildfires so bad?

• Celebrities among thousands to flee homes as Los Angeles wildfires rage

• After ‘tremendous demand’, water tanks used for fighting LA wildfires ran dry early

City’s supply completely filled before fire, but within hours three 1m-gallon tanks serving Palisades depleted

As firefighters battled three wildfires raging across Los Angeles in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the water tanks supplying Pacific Palisades – where the largest of the fires broke out – ran dry.

Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer and CEO of the Los Angeles department of water and power, told reporters that by 3am Wednesday, the three 1m-gallon tanks serving the Palisades had been depleted.

As officials urge people to stay indoors, those experiencing homelessness struggle to shield themselves from toxic air

Thick, noxious clouds of smoke engulfed Los Angeles as several wildfires rage across the region, creating heightened hazards for the tens of thousands of unhoused people living on the streets in the county.

As authorities ordered evacuations for more than 82,000 people in various parts of LA and urged others to remain indoors to shield themselves from the gray smoke, unhoused Angelenos were struggling to protect themselves from the pollution.